#Mike Murdockalypse

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Matt: "Weird...you don't look very blind to me." Mike: "Hey, hey, D.D.! Fancy meeting you here in your usual dark alley environ--" Daredevil vol. 6 #24 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, Mattia Iacono, JP Mayer, and Clayton Cowles

One of my many frustrations with this run is the fact that I actually liked how Zdarsky wrote Mike. I love this snarky little interaction between him and Daredevil (who he doesn't know is Matt); it feels like a tantalizing hint of the dynamic they might have had if any time had been spent actually exploring their relationship.

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Okay, I know this isn't scientific, I know these percentiles only look like this because this poll was floating around in Mike circles specifically, but listen, it's really cool that at least 194 people on this website know Mike reasonably well. This wasn't always the case.

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Daredevil vol. 6 #24 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, Mattia Iacono, JP Mayer, and Clayton Cowles

I've had a lot of fun with the "I ain't gonna seduce my brother's ex again"/"Again?" panel (possibly my favorite panel in this run outside of the 2020 Annual), but I've been meaning to dig into the rest of this scene because I find it really impactful, and because it adds a new layer to Mike's relationship to Matt's life and to the Daredevil continuity as a whole.

To start, for the record, I don't think Mike is being entirely honest here about not intending to seduce Kirsten, because he was definitely flirting with her, at least to some extent, in the previous scene. Just sayin'. You're not that slick, Mike.

Mike has been entwined in Matt's dating life for a very long time; after all, one of the main uses Matt initially found for the Mike persona was hitting on Karen Page. Against all odds, Karen and Mike grew quite close, to the point where she considered dating him instead of Matt, but also to the degree that they would banter together in a way that was, frankly, much more casual and comfortable than their interactions with anyone else. Karen and Mike were buddies, and she was a key reason why Matt kept his "twin" around for so long. It was then very touching when Mike's close ties to her were carried over into his new life as a real person via this heartbreaking moment in Daredevil volume 5 #608:

Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

(This scene was then, of course, followed up a few issues later by Matt having a vivid dream of Mike murdering Bullseye to avenge Karen.)

When Mike returned in the following run, Chip Zdarsky mentioned in an interview that in the new reality Mike had created with the Norn Stone, he wasn't around for those classic Karen interactions--it was still Matt in a funny hat, now impersonating his actual twin brother-- and then vaguely semi-confirmed it on-panel in Daredevil volume 7 #1. I'm not entirely convinced one way or the other, and Mike's Karen connection still means a lot to me. But instead, we have the scene at the top of this post, which possibly replaces it by tying Mike more broadly to Matt's past partners.

We as fans can continue to speculate about which ex(es) Mike "seduced", and what kind of relationship he had with any or all of them in this new version of the timeline. But his startling, fierce anger in this scene suggests a genuine connection and a deep loss. Regardless of what his intentions toward Kirsten may be, he seems affronted by Daredevil's suggestion that he would be a danger to her when Matt is the one who has caused so much harm, and he seems moved by what he knows of Kirsten's pain in a way that suggests he has directly witnessed at least one of the other tragic chapters in Matt's love life. Maybe he did still know Karen in this new reality. Or maybe he spent time with Glori. I'm personally drawn to the idea that he was close with Heather. Whatever the details, we have ended up with a Mike who is carrying real grief and resentment regarding Matt's body-strewn dating history, who is quick to speak up against Matt and in defense of Kirsten, and I could never have predicted that but I love it dearly, not least because of the added terrible poetry of Mike also dying due to proximity to Matt-- tying Mike, in a way, even more closely to that legacy of Matt's dead girlfriends.

There's an extra layer to this scene that I find curious, which is that Mike is yelling at Daredevil. While Matt's civilian identity was linked to some of his exes' suffering (his abuse of Heather, Elektra dying in his arms while he was in civvies, his laundry list of bad behavior after Milla's hospitalization), more of their deaths were caused by Daredevil's enemies. Yet Mike doesn't acknowledge this; he places the blame firmly on his "dear brother in rehab", and acts as though he thinks Daredevil might not be aware of Matt's bloody dating history. This might provide some clues about which of Matt's exes Mike knew (Did he only know one of the women whose death was Matt-centered rather than Daredevil-centered?). We're also prompted, again, to ask the question of Matt's secret identity in regards to Mike, both now and prior to the Purple Children's mind-wipe (which, thanks to the Norn Stone re-write, Mike was now around for). I have been haunted for years now by a specific bit of wording from the mind-wipe. The Purple Children told the world in volume 5 #20: "Daredevil does good things. Forget anything else." It was one hell of a thing for them to say, and its consequences have never really been addressed. Is there a chance that Mike's mind no longer connects those deaths to Daredevil because they were not "good things"? Food for thought...

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Foggy: "I mean, I love [Matt] like a brother and it's like he's part of my family, but...but my family's pretty messed up!" Daredevil vol. 1 #354 by Karl Kesel, Cary Nord, Christie Scheele, Matt Ryan, Ul Higgins, and Jim Novak

Matt: "Foggy, I love you like a brother...but I'm starting to love you like my brother, the wild #$@%-up who ruins everything he touches!" Daredevil vol. 6 #24 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, J.P. Mayer, Mattia Iacono, and Clayton Cowles

I'm obsessed with this parallel.

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Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, Le Beau Underwood, and Clayton Cowles

There's a part of me that says I should conserve the few Mike Murdock scenes that I haven't analyzed yet, because who knows when (or if...) we will get more? But it's also nuts to me that four years have gone by and I haven't posted about this scene yet, so screw it, I'm gonna talk about it now.

I've written a bit before about the way this issue emphasizes the concept of Mike barging into pre-existing spaces, observing things that had not been observed before by any pre-existing characters, and ultimately presenting a new path for readers to follow through Matt Murdock's life history. The creative team positions Mike not alongside his twin, but almost in opposition to him, through stark differences in their childhood experiences. Matt loved his father unconditionally, Mike's relationship with Jack was a bit more complicated. Matt tried to stay out of trouble in school, Mike beat up bullies without apology. And then we get this absolute bomb drop of a scene, in which Mike is present where no one was supposed to be, and as a result, is struck with a life-upending revelation that will not hit Matt until years later. This scene stunned me when I first read the issue, because no matter how much Real Boy Mike's story might have diverged from his brother's, I never expected him to have a different experience of this.

Daredevil vol. 1 #230 by Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, Christie "Max" Scheele, and Joe Rosen

In Daredevil volume 1 #230, Matt finds himself in a church basement being cared for by nuns after collapsing, near death, in the street. As he lies there, feverish and delirious, he eventually takes notice of a particular nun. Her presence, her smell, and the feel of the cross necklace she wears (which, as seen in the panels above, she ends up giving to Matt) conjure up a long-forgotten memory from the time of his accident. He recognizes this nun as a mysterious woman who visited him in the hospital, as he lay suffering from his newly acquired hypersenses.

Man Without Fear vol. 1 #1 by Frank Miller, John Romita Jr., Christie Scheele, Al Williamson, and Joe Rosen

It is an intimate moment, written almost like a dream; a calming presence in the middle of one of the most nightmarish experiences of his life. Adult Matt pieces together this sensory puzzle, the mystery of this nun, and eventually uncovers the truth: that she is his mother, who he had been raised to believe was dead. This revelation is the start of a long and winding journey through which Matt and Maggie carefully, nervously inch back into each other's lives and begin to build a relationship.

But in the 2020 Annual, this private little moment between Matt and the stranger he will one day come to know as his mother is private no more. It now has a witness, and we the readers have a new, messier perspective on this classic scene. Enter: the brother who wasn't supposed to be there.

In this new version of Daredevil history, Mike spends the night at the hospital, watching over Matt after Jack is forced to leave for work. As Daredevil fans, we have spent plenty of origin retellings and flashbacks inside that hospital room, but Mike stays on a bench out in the hallway, involved but still not fully immersed in what is happening-- an intruder, a spare (I love the detail that he and Matt are dressed exactly the same in this scene). Not once do we see Mike enter that room at any point. The closest he comes to it on-panel is standing uncomfortably in the doorway. And that is how he remains when Maggie arrives and makes her fateful visit: outside, unconnected. When Mike wakes up, she is already in the room with Matt. Maybe she took a moment, as she passed by, to reach out to her other son and he just wasn't awake to notice. We might never know, and neither will he. What matters is that Mike is forced to listen in, and by listening in, he reaches the same conclusion about Maggie that Matt won't until years later. And for Mike, it isn't a gentle, gradual, fever-softened understanding. It is a sudden, nightmarish jolt at the end of a long day filled with sudden, nightmarish jolts.

Mike bears this revelation alone and silently. He could have marched into that room and confronted Maggie. He could have gone in after she left, just to be closer to his brother in this moment of shock and uncertainty. Instead, he chooses to walk away. Later in the issue he reveals to Jack that he has found out the truth, but if the volume 1 continuity has remained intact, we can assume that he never tells Matt. Instead, he carries the burden of this secret knowledge himself, and allows his brother the freedom and peace of mind to not be hurt by the shattering of such a foundational lie.

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Oh hey, that was me! Here's the tweet in question.

on twitter someone asked zdarsky what mike's middle name was fr the same reason to which he answered that his name was micheal BADBOY murdock

Of course why didn’t I consider that

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"You're crazy, all of you. I'm real, you hear me? As real as anyone." Daredevil vol. 5 #607 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

"I don't even know how to say this...I'm not real." Devil's Reign #5 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto,  Marcio Menyz, and Clayton Cowles

I touched on this topic in this post, but the thought has been gnawing on my brain since Devil's Reign #5 dropped (in March 2022? Mike has been dead for two years already?! God...) so I'm giving it its own post.

Modern Mike's existence is divided into two clearly delineated states of being: "fragment" (Reader's umbrella term for his creations) and "Real Boy" (Mike's term for himself from the 2020 Annual, though shout-out to the fans who had already been calling him that since 2018). It's a literal transformation, from one form of life to another, but it also spans Mike's character arc and psychological journey: from desperately declaring his realness in Daredevil volume 5 to begrudgingly accepting the nature of his existence at the end of his introductory arc, to taking action and making himself real in Daredevil volume 6. For me, the above scene from #607 was the gut-punch moment that first got me intensely intensely invested in modern Mike, when the depth of his fear and the horror of his situation became clear-- and the emotional resonance of that moment, for me, carried over into the bombshell scene in Devil's Reign #5 when he answered the questions that had been left dangling after he rewrote reality in the 2020 Annual: Did he still remember the previous version of the world? Did he remember what he had done to change it? Did he remember being a "fragment"?

His nervous declaration to Butch-- "I'm not real"-- hits like a truck not just because it is such a risky admission, but also because of how it contextualizes Mike's new reality and what his cosmic rewrite actually changed for him. Which, it would seem, was probably not enough.

Yes, after his trick with the Norn Stone, the gaps in his memories have been filled in. Yes, he now has a birth certificate and a social security number (presumably) and actual friends and family who share actual history with him, and I'm sure that's a tremendous relief. But how much of a solace can it really be, when he still knows that the only reason he has all of those things is because he forced the universe to give them to him? His twin might think they were born together now, but Mike still knows the truth about how he was created, and now he is the only person in the world who does. He has gone from having unique memories of a past that doesn't exist for anyone else to...having unique memories of a past that doesn't exist for anyone else.

Is this new reality that much better than the old one for Mike? If he still knows that he hasn't always been real, does he feel any less like a ghost?

It is very easy to find parallels between Mike being the only person who remembers his time as a "fragment" and Matt, following the Purple Children's mind wipe, being the only person who still knew that he was Daredevil. Matt was stuck with knowledge of a world that once was-- a world in which his identity was public-- and he couldn't handle the sudden total isolation of no one at all sharing his secret, and so decided to tell someone (but just one person; Foggy). Mike's situation was nearly the same. The fear and isolation and vulnerability he'd felt as a fragment was something he had literally bent the universe to escape, but he was still left haunted by the memory of it. We didn't get much of a sense of what was going on in Mike's head in his appearances following the Annual, but I can only imagine that, mixed in with everything else he was feeling in that scene in Devil's Reign #5, he felt some amount of relief sharing the weight of that secret with his best friend. I have to wonder if, had he lived long enough, he would have told anyone else.

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Daredevil vol. 8 #8, "Life in Hell's Kitchen" by Ty Templeton

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Mike Murdock's Sunglasses: On Character Design and Autonomy

I've written a little in the past about character design in regards to the translation of zany alter ego 1960s Mike Murdock into slightly-more-grounded, at least 85% more real 21st century Mike Murdock. Specifically, I talked with artist Phil Noto about Mike's outfits in Daredevil #606-612, and analyzed the clothing choices made by the creative team in the 2020 Annual. However, one specific detail that I find interesting in Mike's transformation from Matt's hyperactive id to his own autonomous person that I haven't really written about yet is his sunglasses-- when he wears them, when he stops, and how this shift may or may not align with his journey.

Matt: "Let's see now-- I'll just muss up the mop, to give myself that carefree tousled look! A fella like Mike wouldn't be caught dead with a simple Ivy-League hair comb! And, I'll have to give my specs a coffee break for a while, as I cover my sightless eyes in a more colorful way-- If the attorney-at-law business ever gets slow, I might just decide to open a school of method acting! Yessir! Stanislavsky had nothing on me! Now, all I've gotta do is change my personality! I figure a clown like Mike Murdock is sure to be on all the time!" Daredevil vol. 1 #26 by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, and Artie Simek

Matt and his dark glasses were inseparable in the 60s-- literally, to the point that he even apparently wore them under his Daredevil mask (fortunately, he doesn't do that anymore). The clear hesitance of DD artists in this period to draw their blind protagonist's uncovered eyes is likely one of the reasons that when it came time for Matt to invent himself a fake sighted twin, the sunglasses stayed on. This has not always been the case. In the years since, Matt has taken on several sighted identities in which he does not wear glasses at all-- notably, con artist Jack Batlin in the 90s. Of the two approaches, the former makes slightly more in-universe sense. As someone with no vision at all, who was blinded in a physically damaging accident, logic suggests that Matt's eyes would look different from those of a sighted person-- most likely due to chemical burns/scarring, but at the very least from things like a lack of eye contact. Thus, the choice for Matt to simply switch up his style of shades for the Mike look, rather than taking the risk of foregoing them entirely, feels logical (even if it doesn't always match up with the way Matt's eyes are actually depicted, but that's a topic for another post).

As it turned out, the oversized, colorful shades ended up tying perfectly into the loudness of the rest of "Mike's" outfits, becoming a memorable staple of the look that Matt crafted for his fake twin-- a look that was as distant from the classic Matt Murdock suit and tie (and simple, dignified shades) as he could manage. These shades were iconically, undeniably Mike's. However, they were still born from the use of sunglasses as a visual shorthand for-- and Matt's in-character response to-- his blindness. A Daredevil reader in 1968 might have looked at ol' Loudmouth Mike and asked the question: If this guy were a real person, independent of Matt, with his own backstory and reasons for dressing the way he does-- would he still choose to wear dark glasses?

Mike: "Well, as I live and breathe! You're Daredevil, right? Friend of my brother, if I don't miss my guess. Real pleasure to meet you at last." Daredevil vol. 5 #606 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles ("As I live and breathe" is such a funny thing for him to say in this scene.)

Enter: Fragment-Boy Mike, and the beginnings of an answer.

When it came to transforming the concept of Mike Murdock into a fully realized character of his own -- not to mention pulling him out of the 1960s and into the 2010s-- some core Mike Murdock elements were dropped by the creative team, both for the sake of streamlining the narrative and in order to match the tone of the contemporary comic. Fragment Mike is no longer Daredevil's alter ego; in fact, he claims in his first appearance in Daredevil #606 that he has never even met DD before. Gone are the loud clothes, the primary colors, the waistcoats, the fedora with the feather in it. Curiously, all that remains of his original Look(TM)...is the sunglasses.

Foggy: "That is...correct. How did you...?" Mike: "Because I ain't him. I'm me. And now, Foggy...you need to call my brother." Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

Fragment Mike existed in a kind of limbo that neither he, nor Matt, nor even his "creator" Reader really understood-- a tortuous state of both being and non-being, in which he believed himself to be real and then had his worldview shattered by learning that no one else saw him that way. Mike claimed his autonomy and fought for his right to live throughout that story arc, but the simple truth was that he was born out of Matt-- specifically, out of Matt's case files, from which Reader accidentally spawned him-- and the memories he possessed of being anyone/anything else were false. He was nothing but a twisted, reanimated echo of an identity his brother had created, dark glasses included; Matt but not Matt, physically separate but still bound to his brother.

Mike: "I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but...but I'm not. I've got some fake memories. I'm like a shell of a thing...but inside...I can tell I didn't live through anything...and I think...I think it's driving me crazy." Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

But! Fragment Mike, just like Matt, maybe because of Matt, is a fighter. He does not take being fake lying down. Through some Norn Stone magic, our fragment became a Real Boy, with real memories of a real backstory. And if we take a look through that backstory, we finally receive an answer to that 1968 DD fan's hypothetical question, because...

Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

The moment Mike Murdock becomes a real person, the sunglasses vanish.

Look back through Daredevil volume 6. Once he is officially, cosmically real, the only time we ever see Mike wearing dark glasses is when he is dressed up as Matt (ohhh, the poetry of it all!). He is wearing them, standing in Matt's apartment, when he dies in Matt's place-- fated, in the end, to never entirely escape his brother's gravitational pull-- but what matters is that the sunglasses tied Mike to his origins as his twin in a costume, and the loss of them indicates fully and utterly that Mike has broken away and become his own person. We even get this fascinating scene at the beginning of volume 7:

Matt: "...It was Matt. He came back from rehab, went to his apartment... I don't know what the #$@% Fisk was thinking, but I know they've got history and... Ah, Butch. He killed my brother." Daredevil vol. 7 #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles

This is Matt Murdock, in the year 2022, once more pretending to be Mike...post-Norn Stone reality rewrite. And this time? No sunglasses. In fact, Matt claims that the key to a foolproof Mike Murdock disguise is in the eyes: "Not just making sure they faced the right direction...but that no matter what, he had kindness in them..."

Do I love Mike Murdock wearing smarmy shades? Of course I do. But I love a good piece-of-clothing-as-allegory just as much, and I love peeling back the layers of identity to discover who Mike really is when he is not his brother.

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Augh! Yes! This exchange always gets me because it's obvious that Mike is scared, but he's trying so hard to act tough and in-control.

mike attempting to threaten fucking daredevil while calling him pal. why are you like that

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I'm not going to make Magical Twins my new icon image, I'm far too attached to good ol' singing Mike, but the temptation is there.

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All right! I've polled for this before, but now that I have the proper technology...

(Part 1 is here)

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*Pokes at the dirt around Mike's grave* "Do something."

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Reader: "That dirtbag Mike show up yet, Frank?" Frank: "Yeah. The brothers Murdock are down there right now, just having a conversation. Matt hasn't given the signal yet, though." Reader: "What's Matt waiting for? I can unwrite Mike in two seconds. Got the erase tab right here in my hand. He's not even a person, just a fragment. What the hell is there to talk about?" Frank: "They're brothers, Reader. Even if it's messed up, and barely real, they're brothers. There's always something to talk about."

Daredevil volume 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

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All right! I've polled for this before, but now that I have the proper technology...

(Part 2 is here)

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my only """real""" complaint about daredevil black armor is that we had the perfect opportunity to have MORE MIKE AND IT WAS WASTED. the flashbacks should have included him.

YES! I was thinking about that too! (Probably not news, I'm always thinking about Mike.) It would have been really cool for Chichester to position the series as a retrospective within the new Mike continuity and include him. I'd give anything to see Chichester's take on our guy (he's one of my favorite DD writers and very good with character-building), and heck, even beyond just the baby Matt training flashbacks, I would love to know what Mike was up to in the 90s, following Matt's "death". He would've gotten a kick out of Jack Batlin.

I understand why they didn't go that route, though, or why it might not have even occurred to them. This series was very clearly set up as a chance for Chichester to finally return to his status quo-- the very specific Daredevil world and supporting cast he'd built in the 90s-- as if no time had passed and his run had not been messily cancelled. It's a continuation of a pre-existing thing, a comic meant to feel like it could have actually come out in 1994. Because of this, including something modern like Mike, regardless of his new always-been-real status, would have felt out-of-place.

That said...all other flashback series from 2020 forward should not be exempt. Put Mike in all of the things.